The Catholic Studies department head and Patristics scholar, Doctor Jean Courtney von Balthasar, picked me up at the airport to begin my two-day visit. Tiny airport in Bismarck, only a tad bigger than GTR in Mississippi, and only a two minute drive onto the University of Mary campus which is a little bit outside of town and up on a hill overlooking the Missouri River. Immediately after the usual pleasantries, and after I had thrown my bag into the bag of Dr. von Balthasar’s truck, he started telling me how much he hated the architecture of the campus.
“Breuer. Marcel Breuer, can you believe it?”
I don’t know who that is. “Yeah.”
“Breuer,” Dr. von Balthasar says again, “Of all people. Stone everywhere. Modernism. I just can’t stand it. And I’m the only one, you know?”
“Yeah.”
“Everyone else loves it. The school brags about the design calling it a ‘jewel on the prairie’,” he says, tapping the steering wheel and looking at me. “A jewel on the prairie.’ ”
I don’t say anything and I see we are approaching the campus. Dr. von Balthasar makes a final point.
“I’d prefer something more traditional. Traditional architecture is best, especially for a Catholic college, wouldn’t you say?”
I nod.
“Something modeled on the University of Bologna would work much better for us, I think. Don’t you agree?”
I nod. We pull onto campus, drive past Chesterton’s, and park in front of the Benedictine Center. “I’ve always been a big fan of Gaudí,” he says to me, “ Look at the Sagrada Família now. Imagine what it will be like when it’s finally finished.”
My two days at the University of Mary were very full. I went to Mass twice. Had breakfast, lunch, and dinner with five different faculty members including Dr. von Balthasar. Imagine if the campus had been designed in a French Gothic style. Our main chapel modeled after Chartes cathedral, imagine. Why Breuer? I met with the search committee and even with the president of the school, Monsignor Sheeran. I got to teach a history class as part of my interview process and gave a lecture on the end of the Thirty Years War and the Westphalia Settlement, not exactly my strong suit but I think it went okay.
Monsignor Sheeran makes quite the impression. He is a physically imposing man, six foot three maybe an inch taller. He’s a native North Dakotan, from Minot and therefore a fan of all Josh Duhamel movies. Although of an Irish name he looks very Italian; north New Jersey Italian, like he’s lived in South Orange his whole life, went to the public Columbia high school just to avoid going to Seton Hall Prep and yet, lo and behold, ended up at the Hall for college, loved it, spent four years studying Aquinas’ view of civilization and the common good while mashing home runs from both sides of the plate during 38 degree March games under gray skies at Owen T. Carroll field, liked Seton Hall University so much he decided to enter the seminary there, forgoing much of the world for Christ’s sake: a serious girlfriend and many more admirers who wished they were her, a job offer in New York City—for while he primarily studied Aquinas he also studied business at the Stillman School, and an invitation to join the Elizabethtown Twins of the Appalachian League, 33rd round pick of the big Twins that he was.
Monsignor Sheeran is soft-spoken but extremely intelligent. I could tell that even in the short half-hour meeting. (Malcolm Gladwell is right about thin-splicing after all). He is also incredibly nice. Just a thoroughly nice person, like most North Dakotans it seems from my short stay in Bismarck.
My night out in Bismarck was the highlight of the trip. The second night I had dinner with the entire Catholic Studies department and that was great. But the first night was really fun. A mathematics professor, Wilson Wolffe, took me out to dinner.
Mathematics professor? I think looking at my itinerary. Great. This will be great. Some old math geek, some nerdy grandpa droning on about sines and cosines in between asking me to re-start him on his rocking chair…did they find out I was a math major as an undergraduate? Is this why?
Wilson turns out to be the man. Seriously, talk about thin-splicing, I meet this guy and we are talking for five minutes and he’s one of the coolest people I’ve ever met in my life. He’s a kid, like me, a recently minted PhD, thirty-two years old, got his doctorate from the University of Iowa, originally from North Dakota. What about me, he asks? We spend less than ten minutes on these standard biographical questions and then even less on the formal job interview questions, so what do you envision adding to the University? How would you classify the goals of your research? (the kind of trite questions the asker hates asking and the answerer hates answering and yet the charade goes on), and the rest of the night eating cheeseburgers and drinking beer in downtown Bismarck.
Bismarck is nice. It reminds me of a smaller version of Boise and that’s about right with the population roughly a third the size of Boise, and up to about 100,000 people when you add in nearby Mandan.
I ask the waitress if they have any local beers she would recommend. From Fargo, she says, will that be okay? It is okay. Wilson and I each drink a few and eat and talk about women. Both of us firmly believe in equality and equal opportunity so we make sure that none of this triumvirate is slighted. We try to allot equal time, as far as that is possible, to eating, to drinking, and to discussing women.
A curious character joins us near the end of the night. A Doctor Bartholomew Foreman, ophthalmologist at nearby Saint Alexius, devout Catholic, and father to fourteen children (eleven girls) whose hobbies include bird watching, ice fishing, and watching the World Series of Poker. Doctor Foreman, sixty-nine years young he tells us, is a regular at this establishment. He’s here so often that he’s even been nicknamed by the staff—Been, pronounced Ben, as in “he been in here yet today?”
With the three of us well foamed up on Fargo beer, and the clock almost to midnight, Dr. Been leans across the table to us and says, almost in a whisper,
“You guys wanna hear some crazy shit?”
Sure, I think. Always.
“I think I’ve finally made my breakthrough. I think it’s almost ready for clinical trials.”
Wilson gives him a curious look. If even he doesn’t know what Dr. Been is talking about…
“Yeah. I think I finally made the breakthrough. Okiedokie?”
“What are you talking about?” Wilson asks.
“My device.”
“Device?”
“Yeah.”
“What device?”
“My ESP invention.”
“What?” Wilson and I say almost simultaneously.
“Yeah,” Dr. Been says, again in a hushed voice. “It’s almost ready for clinical trials. I’ve found a way to manipulate the inner eye with a laser, you know the kind used for LASIK, to do some previously unthought of unheard of stuff with the vitreous humor and send a laser-probe, if you will, up the optic nerve and into the brain where I think I’ll be able to get some quick brain scans and have that information sent back to me, like a boomerang. The crazy part is that I believe my device will be able to decipher the returning information from the brain and allow me to, in essence, read people’s thoughts.”
Wilson and I don’t say anything.
“Yeah,” Dr. Been says, “imagine the potential. No need for a lie detector anymore, a woman could even use it on her husband. You know… honey, do I look fat in this dress? No, darling, you look great. Boom! She pulls out my device, sticks it in her husband’s eye and gets the reading, twenty-seconds tops. You do think I look fat! I’m sorry, honey, I’ll take out that garbage now and mow the lawn and do the other hundred things you asked me to. Just imagine the potential. Both for science and in everyday society.”
Wilson and I don’t say anything. Wilson takes a good chug of Fargo.
“Ah, forget it,” Dr. Been says, slapping his beer and then draining it, with one swig, the way Uwe does. “All a bunch a eye doctor speak and it’s not quite ready anyways. I’ve got to get home to Abigail. You married?,” he asks me.
“Not
yet,” I say, about to explain that I’m engaged and will be getting married soon but Dr. Been cuts me off.
“Lucky bastard.”
I ended up not getting offered the job. My interview couldn’t have gone better. Monsignor Sheeran wrote me a very nice long letter explaining that while everyone gave me good reviews, both the search committee and the professors along with the students who evaluated my in-class lecture, they were, in the end, looking to hire someone older, with more experience, and from North Dakota. It’s for the best, I guess. Bat and I would have grown to love Bismarck I’m sure and I could imagine wasting many a night drinking beers with Wilson and Dr. Been. Who knows? I’m sure we would have loved North Dakota. The people are great. But I do think Bat and I belong in Idaho.
Bat and I exchange our vows and not ones we wrote ourselves. What kind of new-age heathens do you take us for? We do the standard, simple vows, because we are red-blooded apple-pie Americans.
Bat and I receive Holy Communion together for the first time as a married couple. Afterwards Bat takes a bouquet of flowers and places them beneath a statue of the Blessed Mother, on the side of the altar. Soon the Mass is over.
The reception is fun but Bat and I have better things to do. We stay for the shortest time that is allowable—the minimum time to do the required rounds and dances, to get the required pictures, and eat the required food—and then head out the door.
Bat and I make a left turn onto Highway 55, a little outside of Horseshoe Bend, and make our way up to the Cabin for our honeymoon.
Was it worth it? Was it worth being a holdout, waiting for the wedding night?
Yes.
Yes, it was so worth it that I would wait a thousand years for the wedding night, for Bat. Yes, it was worth it. I can’t say the wedding night was, or wasn’t, like what I expected because I didn’t have any expectations. I didn’t know what to expect. I will say it was, by far and without a doubt, the greatest day and night of my life, our wedding. I am so in love with Bat.
Yes, yes, I know. Of course I am. This is the “honeymoon phase,” all married couples are like that. I’m not under any illusions. I know Bat and I will have great times and rough patches, I know we will laugh but also fight, but who cares? Does anyone actually listen to what you’re promising in the wedding vows? Marriage is hard, but you’re supposed to stick it out through good times and bad, sickness and health, until death do you part.
Bat’s right hand startles me out of my daydreaming. Bat is driving the car. She wanted to and I’m glad. I haven’t had a chance to look out the window at my beloved Idaho for quite some time now and there’s no better place to do that then from the passenger’s seat. Bat has placed her right hand, what a hand, onto my left hand and I’ll confess I’m still not used to that little golden ring on my fourth finger. Bat plays with it. Turns her fingers over and over again on my wedding band. Bat keeps driving. I keep looking out the window.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Gracjan Kraszewski’s fiction has appeared in Eclectica Magazine, Wilderness House Literary Review, The Dead Mule School of Southern Literature, PILGRIM, The Southern Distinctive, Five on the Fifth, and on The Short Humour Site; academic articles in Religious and Sacred Poetry, North Alabama Historical Review, The Polish Review and Idaho Magazine. Holder of a PhD in history, currently teaching at a university in the Midwest (in the history dept). Fluent in Polish, conversational in Czech and French. A translation (Polish & English) for author Aleksandra Ziółkowska-Boehm subsequently became Chapter One of her book The Polish Experience through World War II: A Better Day Has Not Come (Lanham, MD, 2013) Played baseball in college, professionally in Europe, and for the Polish National team.
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